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| Steven Soderbergh: Black Bag (US 2025). Cate Blanchett (Kathryn St. Jean) & Michael Fassbender (George Woodhouse). Pierce Brosnan (Arthur Stieglitz), Naomie Harris (Dr. Zoe Vaughan), Tom Burke (Freddie Smalls), Regé-Jean Page (Col. James Stokes), Marisa Abela (Clarissa Dubose). |
Black Bag (titre original) / The Insider (titre français) / Le Sac noir (titre québécois).
US © 2025 Focus Features. Société de production : Casey Silver Productions. Production : Casey Silver et Gregory Jacobs
Réalisation : Steven Soderbergh
Scénario : David Koepp
Photographie : Steven Soderbergh (crédité sous le nom de Peter Andrews) – couleur
Décors : Philip Messina
Costumes : Ellen Mirojnick
Musique : David Holmes
Montage : Steven Soderbergh (crédité Mary Ann Bernard)
Distribution
Cate Blanchett (VF : Isabelle Gardien) : Kathryn St. Jean
Michael Fassbender (VF : Jean-Pierre Michaël) : George Woodhouse
Regé-Jean Page (VF : Eilias Changuel) : le colonel James Stokes
Marisa Abela (VF : Victoria Grosbois) : Clarissa Dubose
Naomie Harris (VF : Annie Milon) : Dr Zoe Vaughan
Pierce Brosnan (VF : Emmanuel Jacomy) : Arthur Stieglitz
Tom Burke (VF : Gilduin Tissier) : Freddie Smalls
Gustaf Skarsgård : Philip Meacham
Orli Shuka : Andrei Kulikov
Kae Alexander : Anna Ko
Ambika Mod : Angela Childs
Alex Magliaro : M. Green
Loc: – London, England – Zürich, Switzerland. Le tournage débute le 6 mai 2024 à Londres.
Durée : 94 minutes
Langue originale : anglais
Genre : espionnage, thriller
Sociétés de distribution : Focus Features (États-Unis) ; Universal Pictures (International)
Dates de sortie :
France : 12 mars 2025 - sous-titres francais : Geraima Le Felletin
États-Unis, Québec : 14 mars 2025
Finlande : 17 avril 2025
Vu samedi, le 15 mars 2025, MK2 Bastille (Côté Beaumarchais), Salle 1, 4 boulevard Beaumarchais Paris 75011, 11e, M° Bastille, Lignes 1, 5, 8
Tagline: "It takes a spy to hunt a spy".
IMDb: "When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband - also a legendary agent - faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country."
Wikipédia: " George Woodhouse et sa femme Kathryn sont des légendes de l'espionnage. Lorsque Kathryn est soupçonnée de trahison, George est confronté à un dilemme ultime : son mariage ou la loyauté envers son pays. "
AA: Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag is his third collaboration within four years with the scenarist mastermind David Koepp. As is Soderbergh's occasional habit, he is also the cinematographer (credited as his father) and the editor (credited as his mother).
Black Bag is plot-driven. The plot is devilishly ingenious. The film is brilliant, perfect and breathtaking, and the cast is outstanding.
But life is missing.
"Black Bag" is a spy code expression. "It's in the black bag" means that spies keep secrets even from each another. Kathryn and George love each other even though they cannot trust each other.
This reminds me of Federico Fellini's comment on Marcello Mastroianni: "We have a beautiful lifelong friendship that is based on healthy mutual distrust".
Kathryn & George have been compared with the detective duo Nick & Cora Charles (William Powell, Myrna Loy) in the Thin Man series. Notorious (Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman) and North by Northwest (Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint) have been mentioned. But these references help highlight the glaring absence of warmth and tenderness in the Black Bag. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbinder are icy creatures in public and private. They are the official protagonists, yet they are so distanced that they have become shadows of themselves.
Soderbergh makes the amazingly complex plot run smoothly. I would need to see the film again to understand all the implications. The plot is largely built around two dinner sequences. They are among the most curious in the history of the cinema.
The most impressive sequence for me is the control room with its deadly accurate satellite surveillance powers, followed by a prompt to destroy by drone the car of two Russians on their way in Poland to the Eastern border. Now that the US President is a Russian asset, and the CIA is about to become subordinate to Vladimir Putin's FSB, I wonder what will be left of European security. And American.
I have been a Steven Soderbergh fan since Sex, Lies and Videotape (US 1989). Only later did I catch his feature film debut, the longform music video Yes: 9012 Live (US 1985), the first showcase of his experimental drive. I liked the Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight (US 1998) with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, still my favourite of the Soderbergh "entertainments" that I have seen. Then came the magnificent thrillers with epic resonance, Erin Brockovich (US 2000) and Traffic (US 2000). I would need to visit a Soderbergh retrospective and check out at least Che 1-2, The Informant!, Contagion, The Laundromat and Kimi.
"British intelligence officer George Woodhouse is given one week by his superior, Meacham, to investigate the leak of a top-secret software program code-named Severus. One of five suspects is his wife, Kathryn, also an intelligence officer. He invites the other four suspects, who are also fellow spies, over for dinner. The four suspects are satellite imagery specialist Clarissa, her boyfriend Freddie, agency psychiatrist Zoe, and Zoe's boyfriend James. At dinner, George drugs their food to lower their inhibitions and reveals that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa; Clarissa angrily stabs the latter in the hand."
"Meacham dies of a suspicious heart attack. George becomes suspicious of Kathryn after she denies having seen a certain film, although he found a ticket stub in her trash. He breaks into her office and learns she will be traveling to Zurich. He persuades Clarissa to redirect a spy satellite and watches Kathryn meet with a Russian operative in Switzerland. Meanwhile, James informs George that Kathryn has access to a Zurich bank account containing ₤7 million in misdirected and unexplained funds. In a tense psychiatric session, Zoe asks if Kathryn prioritizes her career or her husband. In a subsequent session, Zoe breaks up with James. Freddie informs Kathryn that George suspects her."
"It is revealed that during the few minutes George redirected the satellite to watch Kathryn's meet in Zurich, another Russian operative disappeared from a Liechtenstein safehouse with a copy of the Severus program, and is now en route to Eastern Europe to use it to cause a nuclear meltdown. Kathryn uses Clarissa to track the Russian. She suspects that their boss, Stieglitz, deliberately allowed Severus to leak in order to cause a nuclear meltdown and destabilize Vladimir Putin's government, even though it may kill thousands of innocent people. She leaks the Russian's location to a CIA contact, resulting in a drone strike killing both Russians in Poland. George puts all suspects except his wife Kathryn through a polygraph to determine when they first learned about Severus. In bed that night, husband and wife compare notes and realize they are being set up."
"They invite the other four suspects to a second dinner party. Kathryn places a gun on the table, while George says they will play a game. He reveals several secrets; namely, that Freddie and Zoe had an affair, and that Zoe learned of the Severus program from James but attempted to stop its dissemination due to her Catholic faith. George states that there were two plots: one by Stieglitz and James to leak Severus and cause a nuclear meltdown, and another by Zoe and Freddie to use Kathryn to stop it. James grabs the gun, confesses to plotting with Stieglitz and killing Meacham, and attempts to shoot George. However, the gun was loaded with blanks. Kathryn shoots and kills James. The remaining colleagues dump James' body in a pond and return to work. Kathryn informs Stieglitz that his plot failed and suggests he remove himself from the picture. She and George reaffirm their love for each other. They realize that the Zurich bank account containing ₤7 million is untouched and could still be theirs."
Wikipedia: "Soderbergh's films often revolve around familiar concepts which are regularly used for big-budget Hollywood movies, but he routinely employs an avant-garde arthouse approach. They center on themes of shifting personal identities, vengeance, sexuality, morality, and the human condition. His feature films are often distinctive in the realm of cinematography as a result of his having been influenced by avant-garde cinema, coupled with his use of unconventional film and camera formats. Many of Soderbergh's films are anchored by multi-dimensional storylines with plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental sequencing, suspenseful soundscapes, and third-person vantage points."
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